It's so funny though (IMO) how over the years intel has gone from a position of "not sure if they care" to make enough chips for Apple computers, through deciding that "they might be interested," past "Apple is great!" and "we're partners!," and now after the breakup, is all "well, maybe they will come back if we are really good."

It's like the history of a dating relationship. If Apple continues to reject them, the next logical position for intel is "Well, we never liked them anyway, so we're seeing other companies now."

Before Apple will come back, they will probably demand a serious (metaphorical) act of contrition from Intel for (metaphorically) paying for several (metaphorical) hookers (by subsidizing

MacBook Air competitors). I suggest Intel give Apple a huge price break on the next generation of PC processors.

2012 has barely gotten started, so I think it is a stretch to declare Intels success.
I really need to hit the sack but I have to suggest this, Intel has messed up Sandy Bridge E and Ivy Bridge pretty badly. Do not believe that Intels goals for 2014 are written in stone.
Also do not forget about AMD, they could easily couple an ARM CPU with an AMD GPU. More than a year ago they where using ARM A9 cores at Global Foundries to test process development. With the right amount of integration beyond the GPU, AMD could have many a customer knocking at their door. Beyond all of that AMD has fusion processors in various forms. Intel simply hasn't demonstrated the chops to build low end hardware.

I think AMD is way too late in the game for mobile. What counts in mobile is performance per watt divided by battery life. So a device that is 22nm and lasts 12 hours is a win, while a device at 32nm and lasts 8 is a fail. This is the reason for the choices made in the iPads, and why we don't see the newest chip in the iPhone first. Tick-tock, expect the iPhone 5 to have the the revised A5 CPU at a higher clock.

Intel messed up when they got rid of their ARM chips. They should have stayed on, but oh no they had the Itanic ship to steer, and weren't even thinking about ULV CPU's. When netbooks were all the rage they came out with... Intel Atom? A rebadged Pentium 3 on a smaller die process. What a joke. This isn't a low-power laptop part, it's a embedded SoC part that belongs in the U-scan's at the grocery store. The power TDP is going up very little on ARM, while Intel is having no luck reducing the power on a Intel CPU except via a die shrink. Intel's server parts have TDP's of 135 watts when they should have the 40 watt TDP of the laptop parts. I'll take Intel seriously wanting to play in the mobile market when they can put out Server, Desktop and Laptop parts all at the same TDP of a laptop part.

Then there is the cost equation and many other trade off.
2012 Medfiled, is performance / watt just about comparable with current ARM design. Although Intel Wins in performance, ARM still wins with lower power usage. But then it is bigger, and hotter.
2013 with 22nm ULP, it should be a lot better for idle performance but then you have 28nm LP version of Cortex A15 big.LITTLE SoC, which could means performance and Idle power wise should keep the advantage to ARM.
2014 Intel will be releasing their Mobile Atom on 14nm first before their Mainstream CPU parts. Which means Intel will again played the game with Nodes advantage, and this time it could well be two nodes ahead as TSMC aren't even reading 20nm parts til late 2014. Although Samsung might be capable of holding up.
So if all things goes well 2014 will truly be the year that Intel is truly equal or better then ARM camp in terms of performance and power.
But then how much better? According to Intel Roadmap, the consequence of quickly shifting Atom through nodes is that there aren't much changes planned to its architecture. Which means its performance / Mhz will pretty much be the same. For higher performance it will have to scale to higher clock speed. The Cortex A15 is, from a high level Point of view,a faster and more powerful Out of Order architecture then Atom. But Atom has Hyperthreading, 64 Bit ( performance advantage on x86 side only ), and better software optimization. So Lets give Intel a 20% advantage here for Smaller Nodes, Higher Frequency and may be other tricks they have.
Idle Power will still be hard to beat, the LITTLE Cortex A7 was designed with Ultra Low Power in Mind. I would doubt Intel could win, But lets call it equal with a node advantage from Intel.
Cost -
So Nvidia would have to add R&D per Unit , Unit Price Per Wafer and their Margin ~ 20% to their price of SoC.
Intel owns their Fab, so they get BOTH the Fabs Margin and their Final Sale Margin. Intel could properly make a SoC that has same performance and priced the same as Nvidia but still gets 3x% profits margin.
Now , Unlike other players Apple only make SoC for themselves. Apple makes NO profits on the SoC. Just for the simple Numbers, Apple could make a same cost SoC as Nvidia but with 20% more transistors. And Hence Faster performance.
Now for Intel to grab Apple's SoC business, they must provide equal or better performance x86 SoC for the cheaper price. Intel would then have to make chips that is good enough ( Post 2014 ) and with less then 15% Profits Margin. Much lower then what they are used to get with Desktop CPU 50%.
And then even so, the cost of the current Apple SoC is less then $30, even intel could provide something equal or better at $25. Would Apple even be bothered with the $5 dollars on the iPhone per unit sold but to lose control of their own SoC?

I think you're overly optimistic here. The 14nm node is going to be a doozy. 22nm is late by several months, and Intel will be lucky to keep to a schedule. We may not see production quantities until 2015. Even now, many mobile 22nm parts aren't available, and won't be for a month or two, possibly more.

That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see Intel fabbing Apples parts. I would. But if it doesn't happen, I don't see the problem as being as bad as you are making it out to be, and Apple has advantages that intel doesn't have in making their own OS. Apple's devices have had a performance advantage for several years because of their own IP in the chips. This will just get better as Apple mods the designs more and more over time. Intel can't do that, and will offer, it seems, standard designs for mobile as they do now. All manufacturers using their chips will need to work within the parameters of what Intel sells them.

But Apple's customizations will continue to become more extreme. That will allow them to continue to offer devices that have better battery life and better performance.

Right now, Intel's new chip, if people will read the entire Anandtech review instead of quoting just small parts of it so that they would see it, offers just average performance overall. Nothing special. It's a good start, as it shows that Intel can move within the crowd. But they don't stand out in any way. It's expected that the new Cortex 15 SoC's will easily equal anything Intel puts out this year. And its not like the Cortex 15 is the end of the line either.

Beyond that Anandtech is heavily biased towards Intel, to the extent I don't even see the site as credible anymore. Frankly most of what he publishes is rubbish.
Apple is slowly getting there process wise but what is funny here is that Intel absolutely needs these process shrinks to compete at all. Medville is still wanting in many ways when looked at as a tablet engine.
Another thing here is that Apple has a distinct advantage going ARM, in that they can obtain a higher level of integration and customization that Intel will never support.
The tests are rigged to show Intel in a positive light. It isn't that he is dishonest as all the info is there, it is more a question of being ethical.
In any event I think Intel is pushing so damn hard here because they know they are loosing the battle. I86 is just so bloated it doesn't have a competitive chance without being two nodes ahead of ARM.

I totally disagree with you on this. Anand himself has been using Macs for several years now, which shocked his readers. So while it's true that many posters there are as biased towards Microsoft as the majority here are biased towards Apple, his reports are eminently fair, and are some of the best on the web.

You may not like everything he does, but to say he's biased is just not fair.

I totally disagree with you on this. Anand himself has been using Macs for several years now, which shocked his readers. So while it's true that many posters there are as biased towards Microsoft as the majority here are biased towards Apple, his reports are eminently fair, and are some of the best on the web.
You may not like everything he does, but to say he's biased is just not fair.

I agree that AT factual reporting is sound and fair, but in many AT articles — most often in regards to Apple products where the user experience accounts for more than can be checked off on a spec sheet — Anand and his writers will oft ad opinions that I think are completely off base.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

I realize we're hitting quantum limits soon, but 4nm should be possible.

Researchers don't consider 4nm to be attainable. 10nm, is likely about the lowest they can go. At 10nm, it's about 20 atoms making up a line on the chip. At that point, the principle of uncertainty becomes the largest component, and the losses become dominant. Below that, it isn't seen to be possible. Other methods will be needed. But no one knows if the other methods being studied are practical, or if they are, what it will cost.

In addition, lithography, while working at 14nm (barely) hasn't been shown to be possible much below 10nm. One major additional problem is that the costs have been escalating dramatically as the process size shrinks. Manufacturing plant cost has doubled going from 32nm to 22nm, and that doubling is expected for 14nm. We're already talking about $8 billion per plant.

Because of the difficulties, and cost, industry discussions have pointed to a stretching out of the last one or two introduction dates for the upcoming process shrinks. Otherwise, it's thought, it won't be possible to make back the R&D plus the plant construction costs. We may see 14nm pushed back to 2015, or thereabouts. 10nm, if possible, may not come until 2017.

There's even talk of not going to 14nm, but 16 instead, and then 12 rather than 10. That MAY allow them going to 8 or 9.

Apple needs to keep with Samsung and others by using quad core cpu in iPhones and iPads.

Why? Not that Apple won't eventually go to a quad core on some mobile devices.I was looking at the latest Sammy phone with the quad core chip. Neat, but what the heck you going to do on your phone that requires 4 cores running at 1.4 ghz? Not that applications won't be written to take advantage of that. They will. Eventually.
At this point I can't really say that the iPad needs quad core yet, either.
Of course when the iPad was introduced I didn't think it would evolve into a stand alone computer as fast as it did. So what do i know?

I think AMD is way too late in the game for mobile. What counts in mobile is performance per watt divided by battery life. So a device that is 22nm and lasts 12 hours is a win, while a device at 32nm and lasts 8 is a fail. This is the reason for the choices made in the iPads, and why we don't see the newest chip in the iPhone first. Tick-tock, expect the iPhone 5 to have the the revised A5 CPU at a higher clock.

Intel messed up when they got rid of their ARM chips. They should have stayed on, but oh no they had the Itanic ship to steer, and weren't even thinking about ULV CPU's. When netbooks were all the rage they came out with... Intel Atom? A rebadged Pentium 3 on a smaller die process. What a joke. This isn't a low-power laptop part, it's a embedded SoC part that belongs in the U-scan's at the grocery store. The power TDP is going up very little on ARM, while Intel is having no luck reducing the power on a Intel CPU except via a die shrink. Intel's server parts have TDP's of 135 watts when they should have the 40 watt TDP of the laptop parts. I'll take Intel seriously wanting to play in the mobile market when they can put out Server, Desktop and Laptop parts all at the same TDP of a laptop part.

I can't blame Intel for divesting themselves of the ARM division. At the time, smartphone sales weren't really such a big deal, and their growth was slow. SoC's for other phones were pretty cheap, and didn't provide a worthwhile area for Intel to pursue. While its always easy to look back, as hindsight is always 20/20, as they say, there was simply no way to have predicted the iPhone, and how it would totally change the phone industry.

I'm sure that if Intel knew about all of that, they would have pushed for Apple to use their product, and it would have been very possible that Apple would have done so, as their first SoC was off the shelf.

The truth is that even though Medfield is just a so so product right now, Intel is getting a number of manufacturers lined up to use it. As an SoC for low and medium priced phones, it will probably do ok. Intel will improve it, and it will do better. That's the way it works.

Meanwhile, Intel is over $40 billion in sales, and is very profitable. They have the time they need.

I agree that AT factual reporting is sound and fair, but in many AT articles — most often in regards to Apple products where the user experience accounts for more than can be checked off on a spec sheet — Anand and his writers will oft ad opinions that I think are completely off base.

You mean, such as the opinion, after testing an iPad2 with the new 32nm SoC inside, that it provides much better battery life, and that Apple is doing what they need to in order to prepare for this next generation scaling? That kind of opinion?

Or the opinion that the iPad is the tablet to buy if you want the best experience?

Why? Not that Apple won't eventually go to a quad core on some mobile devices.I was looking at the latest Sammy phone with the quad core chip. Neat, but what the heck you going to do on your phone that requires 4 cores running at 1.4 ghz? Not that applications won't be written to take advantage of that. They will. Eventually.
At this point I can't really say that the iPad needs quad core yet, either.
Of course when the iPad was introduced I didn't think it would evolve into a stand alone computer as fast as it did. So what do i know?

I'd like to see a really good implementation of a dual core Cortex 15 later this year, with new Imagination 6000 based graphics for the iPhone (if possible). I would expect the same thing for the next iPad.

Right now, two really good, fast cores will be enough. It remains to be proven the 4 Cortex9 cores will be better than two Cortex 15 cores. And significantly superior graphics has been very good for Apple, but it costs more, and other companies haven't been willing to take that cost beat down.

But a year from now, 4 cores will likely, at least for tablets, be required. It could be more efficient for a 4 core device to do better multitasking, and tasks such as movie and photo editing than, 2 core devices. That, plus 3D apps, such as CAD, which I already use on my iPad, can use all the oomph they can get. And Apple, Adobe, Avid and others have multi year experience in using multi core devices to speed up the rendering in their apps. I expect them to be able to use this experience to quickly get up to speed (heh, pun intended!) on this on multi-core tablets.

You mean, such as the opinion, after testing an iPad2 with the new 32nm SoC inside, that it provides much better battery life, and that Apple is doing what they need to in order to prepare for this next generation scaling? That kind of opinion?
Or the opinion that the iPad is the tablet to buy if you want the best experience?
Or just the ones that are not what people here want to read?

No, the ones that are about how a company should run. Usually focusing on how finance based objectives that Apple is taking.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

He's absolutely right about that being their job, it's the only rational way forward for them. Whether they succeed or not is another question entirely.

It's so funny though (IMO) how over the years intel has gone from a position of "not sure if they care" to make enough chips for Apple computers, through deciding that "they might be interested," past "Apple is great!" and "we're partners!," and now after the breakup, is all "well, maybe they will come back if we are really good."

It's like the history of a dating relationship. If Apple continues to reject them, the next logical position for intel is "Well, we never liked them anyway, so we're seeing other companies now."

It's not like Apple is not giving them any mobile business. Intel gets all of Apple's Mac Book business now and most likely into the future.

Apple has the enviable position of being able to come out with a Intel-based table or iPad at any time without having to abandon the iOS base. This could be done for the enterprise market who may want devices with MS Office or some other features that are more PC-centric. Since Apple is bringing OSX and iOS closer together as an experience, they are even in a more solid position, moving forward, then Microsoft is with Windows 8, which is really barely beta compared to Apple's mature and established OS.

I can hardly believe that today's reality is stronger for Apple and ARM than it is for Windows and Intel.

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge

we have to compare apples to apples though (pun unintended). because the xolo is running android, we cant directly compare to the iphone in terms of battery life, because we dont know how much of the difference is due to the os and how much is due to the soc.

while xolo's results are not earthshattering, it does show that intel can go toe to toe with arm on battery life. and imo it effectively kills the claim that x86 will never be as power efficient as arm. i say that intelms outlook on mobile is alot brighter than it was a year ago.

will apple use intel socs? i dont know, but i can imagine apple abandoning all the investments they made into designing their own arm chips

not sure what data you are looking at but the battery life of that intel based phone is horrible and no where near "toe to toe" with ARM. Have fun charging your intel phone over twice as often as i will on my iphone.

Unfortunately I can't right now. I'll surely post them if I think of any of the specific reviews but it's been a bunch of little things over the years. To give you an idea it tends to come from the PoV of the old-school DIY/ 'everything needs to be open source" type mindset that Apple doesn't pretend to be or making a comment about the price being too high because the spec processing is in line with other vendors yet seemingly not considering other aspects that could increase the cost.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Unfortunately I can't right now. I'll surely post them if I think of any of the specific reviews but it's been a bunch of little things over the years. To give you an idea it tends to come from the PoV of the old-school DIY/ 'everything needs to be open source" type mindset that Apple doesn't pretend to be or making a comment about the price being too high because the spec processing is in line with other vendors yet seemingly not considering other aspects that could increase the cost.

I haven't seen much of this in Anandtech. As I mentioned earlier, he moved to Macs himself years ago, so it's obvious he finds any pricing tradeoffs to be worthwhile. He has to mention price of the stuff he reviews and writes about. But he is usually of the opinion that Apple's stuff is priced fairly.

IMHO it won't happen, Apple uses samsung to build their iOS devices and now who is their main competitor in mobile samsung. Giving the CPU/GPU to intel will mean that win8 tablets will do the same as Samsung is doing right now and be a main competition to apple getting the same performance.

ARM design with its design is a mayor competitive advantage of apple since both are design in house for performance. Giving that away will be bad business IMHO...

When we want to test the effect of a variable (in this case, the SoC), we need to do it while keeping all other variables constant.

That is why when we want to determine if intel can go toe to toe with ARM, we need to compare it to other android phones, to keep the OS variable constant.

That way, we can be certain that any difference in power consumption is due to the SoC variable, and NOT the OS variable.

And when we make such a comparison, the data shows that the intel phone is right in the middle of the pack.

disagree. ARM clearly kicks the crap out the intel chip as evidenced by the ARM in the iphone doing the same tasks and consuming much lower power. Intels chips have always been power hogs..and this shows they still are. The tests are run across multiple platforms with multiple variables...there is no way to get an apples to apples comparison; you are comparing _different_ hardware architectures, after all. In most cases there are 50% of android cloner phones way ahead of the intel cloner phone in power consumption. Each of those phones has differing chips, circuit boards, displays, etc... Tons of variables.

My point, is an ARM implementation in the iPhone4s has over twice the battery life than the intel power hog. Therefore, Intel is no where near "toe to toe" with ARM as there exists an ARM implementation which is over twice as efficient doing the _same_ tests.

Run a new test comparing Android on this X86 device with Android on the iPhone to get the appropriate numbers.

Which this has not done, as the iPhone is running iOS, not Android. Put Android on the iPhone and run it against the Intel thing and you'll have closer to the right numbers.

To have a truly controlled experiment, you'd use identical hardware SAVE for the X86 chip and ARM chip.

Exactly! One cannot separate the effects of software and hardware. Therefore, one cannot claim that the Intel chip is less power-efficient. The lower battery life may be caused by Android and not by the SoC. OTOH, if you compare only phones running Android, you see Medfield doing quite well. So, most likely it is as efficient as your average ARM SoC.

Exactly! One cannot separate the effects of software and hardware. Therefore, one cannot claim that the Intel chip is less power-efficient. The lower battery life may be caused by Android and not by the SoC. OTOH, if you compare only phones running Android, you see Medfield doing quite well. So, most likely it is as efficient as your average ARM SoC.

That's a reasonable conclusion. However, it's irrelevant to the topic of this discussion for several reasons:

1. Apple doesn't have the average SoC. They have tweaked the heck out of it and have one of the best energy efficiencies available. If Intel wants Apple's business, THAT is the target, not the 'average' SoC.

2. Apple doesn't have any good reason to change. Simply catching up to Apple's chips isn't enough - if Medfield is no better, why bother changing and make the developers go through recompiling and debugging for a new platform? There has to be a significant advantage.

3. #2 is even more true because Intel screwed Apple with their Ultrabook subsidies for Apple's competitors. Apple would have to consider whether Intel would do the same thing in the mobile space.

4. There are other advantages to ARM besides the raw performance and raw power consumption. Apple is able to tweak ARM to meet its own needs. It is far less likely that Intel would let them do that.

I just don't see any way that Apple would switch to Intel any time soon.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

Those unsubstantiated rumors @ Apple wanting to put ARM CPUs inside of their MacBook Airs are ridiculous. Apple dosn't want to cripple the MacBook Air success by outfitting them with smartphone processors. The Ivy Bridge CPUs are far more powerful, providing the raw number crunching power that their portable computers are known for. Only an idiot would think that Apple would trash their successful product to make a lousy netbook. Those died from Apple's 1 - 2 punch the iPad & MacBook Air. Google is now frantically trying to copy the iPad & Intel has copied the MacBook Air & rebranded it the Ultrabook. Apple is still leading the race

I think you're overly optimistic here. The 14nm node is going to be a doozy. 22nm is late by several months, and Intel will be lucky to keep to a schedule. We may not see production quantities until 2015. Even now, many mobile 22nm parts aren't available, and won't be for a month or two, possibly more.
That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see Intel fabbing Apples parts. I would. But if it doesn't happen, I don't see the problem as being as bad as you are making it out to be, and Apple has advantages that intel doesn't have in making their own OS. Apple's devices have had a performance advantage for several years because of their own IP in the chips. This will just get better as Apple mods the designs more and more over time. Intel can't do that, and will offer, it seems, standard designs for mobile as they do now. All manufacturers using their chips will need to work within the parameters of what Intel sells them.
But Apple's customizations will continue to become more extreme. That will allow them to continue to offer devices that have better battery life and better performance.
Right now, Intel's new chip, if people will read the entire Anandtech review instead of quoting just small parts of it so that they would see it, offers just average performance overall. Nothing special. It's a good start, as it shows that Intel can move within the crowd. But they don't stand out in any way. It's expected that the new Cortex 15 SoC's will easily equal anything Intel puts out this year. And its not like the Cortex 15 is the end of the line either.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

When Intel mentioned their Tick Tock Strategy, no one would believe it. And yet they have been executing it exceptionally well over the last few years.
And i thought it was quite obvious 22nm wasn't late, It was the first tri gate Node, so that is complicated in itself, but the main point was they dont want to release it early! You just have to check the channels for the VAST amount of SandyBridge Laptop that are still in stocks and not sold out. Retailers, Distributors were all scrambling to let off these soon to become older models. The amount of Money people spend hasn't go up, but they are putting those money for their Phone or Tablet instead of a Laptop.
P.S - And you have to blame Intel as well since their 32nm has been fabbing so well they decide to push more Sandy into the market then demand.

The 14 nm has been going well according to investor's slide. And i believe so since its name has been changed from 16nm to 15 nm to 14nm over the years. So having a 14nm chip in 2014 May ( which is 2 years from now ) doesn't seems too far fetch at all.

I deliberately left out any conclusion in my previous post. But it seems people are interpreting i am Pro Intel ( Which is not true )

@ Wizard, A Single Core, Same MHz Cortex A15 is expected to beat a Dual Core Cortex A9 in many test while consuming less power. So you only have to look at Anand's Xolo performance charts and it is not hard to see why Cortex A15 will matter.

That's a reasonable conclusion. However, it's irrelevant to the topic of this discussion for several reasons:
1. Apple doesn't have the average SoC. They have tweaked the heck out of it and have one of the best energy efficiencies available. If Intel wants Apple's business, THAT is the target, not the 'average' SoC.
2. Apple doesn't have any good reason to change. Simply catching up to Apple's chips isn't enough - if Medfield is no better, why bother changing and make the developers go through recompiling and debugging for a new platform? There has to be a significant advantage.
3. #2 is even more true because Intel screwed Apple with their Ultrabook subsidies for Apple's competitors. Apple would have to consider whether Intel would do the same thing in the mobile space.
4. There are other advantages to ARM besides the raw performance and raw power consumption. Apple is able to tweak ARM to meet its own needs. It is far less likely that Intel would let them do that.
I just don't see any way that Apple would switch to Intel any time soon.

Yes I acknowledged that previously in the thread. Apple isn't likely to abandon its own design and go with Intel. Just a guess though, if Apple did go with Medfield, it would likely have the chance to tweak and optimize it and match up the current performance of A5S, caeteris paribus. It doesn't seem from the data that Medfield is lagging because of inherent shortcomings in the design, but rather from being less optimized for the OS than A5S, for example.

Never say never. If Intel can create this promise chip and quickly Apple could switch

Hate to break it to you, but Apple controls the release cycles with their ARM SoC hybrid and it's ImgTec selection. They design, internally test and have it stamped out in massive volumes when they want to pull the switch.

Neither IBM, Intel or even AMD offers this and Apple's been burned by decades of waiting for these fab companies to produce for the Desktop/Laptop market. Now that TSMC/Samsung/Global Foundries; especially TSMC and their working relationship with Apple only expanding globally it's rather clear that Intel will never get this business.

The best Intel can do is make sure they don't lose their Desktop/Laptop business exclusivity to AMD.

Those unsubstantiated rumors @ Apple wanting to put ARM CPUs inside of their MacBook Airs are ridiculous. Apple dosn't want to cripple the MacBook Air success by outfitting them with smartphone processors. The Ivy Bridge CPUs are far more powerful, providing the raw number crunching power that their portable computers are known for. Only an idiot would think that Apple would trash their successful product to make a lousy netbook. Those died from Apple's 1 - 2 punch the iPad & MacBook Air. Google is now frantically trying to copy the iPad & Intel has copied the MacBook Air & rebranded it the Ultrabook. Apple is still leading the race
Cheers !

Yes, I agreed - and pointed that out in a different thread.

Even if ARM were 'good enough' for many people, I don't see Apple putting ARM into a MBA. How in the world do you explain to the market that you're releasing a product that's far slower than the previous version? You can't. ARM would have to exceed Intel's performance by a significant margin before Apple would switch - especially since Intel has proven to be an untrustworthy partner (just being 'as good as' isn't sufficient reason for a change).

I can picture an entirely new ARM-based product - an iPad Pro, perhaps - which has a fold-out keyboard, but it would be a unique product rather than an MBA.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

Intel has teased some specs for the next Atom SoC, the Z2580. It's supposed to be dual-core at 1.3 GHz (bursting to 1.8 GHz), with an SGX 544MP2 GPU at 533 MHz. It'll still be on the 32nm process, though. Anandtech did a writeup a few months ago: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5592/intel-atom-z2580-z2000Edited by derekmorr - 5/13/12 at 8:51am

Intel has teased some specs for the next Atom SoC, the Z2580. It's supposed to be dual-core at 1.3 GHz (bursting to 1.8 GHz), with an SGX 544MP2 GPU at 533 MHz. It'll still be on the 32nm process, though. Anandtech did a writeup a few months ago: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5592/intel-atom-z2580-z2000

Unfortunately that won't be out until the 1st half of 2013 (potentially more than a year away) and the results don't look good enough to usurp ARM's throne. I'm sure Intel will get some vendors on-board, it might be an ideal fit for Win8 tablets, and it's certainly a lot closer than they were to ARM a year ago but will be good enough?

Another issue I see is the complexity of the ASIC which could be a deterrent for companies like Apple. Apple licenses the ARM reference designs and then build's their own ASIC according to some general specs thus making it a unique and ideal chip that suits their specific needs. I don't think they can technically call it Cortex with the number of low-level changes they make. Will Intel offer them the same options as ARM? Not from what I've seen.

PS: Your link doesn't work because the period at the end of the sentence is being attributed to the link.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

No, Apple needs to continue to outperform by:
1) better GPUs than the competition.
2) stay at dual core and improve linear performance. For example ARM Cotex A15 designs, smaller topographies and faster GHz.Tablets are not well suited for more than 2 cores.

I don't think anyone here knows that. iOS is based on OS X - which handles multiple cores and threads very nicely. I suspect that an iOS based tablet would easily handle 4 or more cores.

As for the rest, unless you're part of Apple's design team, you don't have any idea what they have planned. Frankly, I don't care if there is one core or a thousand. I don't care if it uses faster GHz or not. I don't care if it's A15 or A2000. All I care about is performance. As long as Apple continues to provide competitive (or superior) performance, they've done their job.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

I don't think anyone here knows that. iOS is based on OS X - which handles multiple cores and threads very nicely. I suspect that an iOS based tablet would easily handle 4 or more cores.
As for the rest, unless you're part of Apple's design team, you don't have any idea what they have planned. Frankly, I don't care if there is one core or a thousand. I don't care if it uses faster GHz or not. I don't care if it's A15 or A2000. All I care about is performance. As long as Apple continues to provide competitive (or superior) performance, they've done their job.

All you have to do is look at the use cases of a tablet. They are designed, in Apple's implementation, to be immersive. The screen is dedicated to a single app view that may have multiple sub views. This is iOS developers guide 101.

While there are gains in performance to be had on multiple cores, you start getting limited after 2 due to the single threaded nature of most processing tasks. So yes, you may have hundreds of theads running but many of those are queued up and are serial in nature. In short, you quickly reach a limit on how much a tablet or phone benefits from multiple cores. Most people hit that limit at 3-4 cores on a desktop. Tablets, I am betting, are around 2.

So if you have limited silicon to work with, where do you put your resources? Given the Retina screens, the GPU is the first obvious choice. Pushing pixels is a highly parallel task and doubling the performance of the GPU doubles the performance of times when pixels are being moved; that happens all the time. From games to word processing, iOS benefits directly from faster GPUs.

The other option is to increase clock rate and increase single thread performance. ARM, really lags traditional designs, like the Intel Core micro architecture, in this area. To get there you use smaller topographies (allowing higher clock rates at the same power usage) and updated ARM designs like the Cortex A15.

In the future, like iOS 8.0 or 9.0, the design paradigm may shift to a multi windowed touch iOS but that is still a few years off and hardware should be optimized for the current use cases and not some far off future use case that may never happen.